President George H.W. Bush had a problem so important — his dog, Ranger, was packing on the
pounds — that he sent a memo to White House staff members asking them to take a pledge.

“We agree not to feed Ranger. We will not give him biscuits. We will not give him food of any
kind,” the pledge read.

Bush ended his memo by saying: “I will, of course, report on Ranger’s fight against obesity.
Right now he looks like a blimp — a nice, friendly, appealing blimp but a blimp.”

That memo, along with countless anecdotes and more than 200 pictures, are featured in
Pets at the White House, a new book by Dallas author Jennifer Boswell Pickens that gives
readers a glimpse of life at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for pets — and what those pets have meant to
their famous owners.

“I think they all would agree 100 percent that they got a lot of comfort from their pets,”
Pickens said.

The coffee-table book devotes a chapter to each administration’s pets from Kennedy to Obama. And
an introduction gives an overview of the animals that were part of first families before 1961.

They include, Pickens notes, the array of pets cared for by Calvin Coolidge and his family —
such as Rebecca the raccoon, who walked on a leash.

“They became such known pet lovers that, if you no longer wanted your pet, you could just ship
it to the White House and they were known to keep it,” Pickens said.

Photographs include first daughter Caroline Kennedy perched on pony Macaroni on the South Lawn
of the White House and the elder Bush walking across the same lawn with brown-and-white springer
spaniel Millie as her puppies trail behind them.

She also gives readers a variety of anecdotes about first pets. She writes that Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s Scottish terrier, Fala, traveled with him; attended galas with world leaders; and even
contributed to the war effort by giving up toys for a scrap-rubber campaign.

When the Kennedys were given a dog by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the dog — named Pushinka
(Russian for “fluffy”) — underwent tests at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to rule out everything
from listening devices to bombs.

Amy Carter, who was 9 when her father became president, says in the book, “Misty, my cat, was
one of my best friends, and she really turned the White House into a home.”

Not long before her death last year, Betty Ford commented for the book that the family’s golden
retriever, Liberty, was her husband’s “favorite adviser.”

Douglas Brinkley, a historian from Rice University in Houston, notes that it is “almost
mandatory” for first families to have a pet, adding, “We demand a first pet.

“So many Americans have dogs and cats,” Brinkley said, “and it makes us feel like the first
family is one of us.”